The Internet is a worldwide network of computers and computer networks arranged to allow the easy and robust exchange of information between users of computers. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have access to computers connected to the Internet via Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Content providers place multimedia information, i.e. text, graphics, sounds, and other forms of data, at specific locations on the Internet referred to as websites. The combination of all the websites and their corresponding web pages on the Internet is generally known as the World Wide Web (WWW) or simply web.
Websites may be created using HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The HTML tags define how the webpages for the website are to be displayed. Users of the Internet may access content providers' websites using software known as a Web browser. After the browser has located the desired webpage, the browser requests and receives information from the webserver typically in the form of an HTML document, and then displays the webpage content for the user. The user may then view other web pages at the same website or move to an entirely different website using the browser.
In most cases, browsers are able to locate specific websites because the website is hosted by a server computer having a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. Presently, there are two standards for IP addresses. The older IP address standard, often called IP Version 4 (IPv4), is a 32-bit binary number, which is typically shown in dotted decimal notation, where four 8-bit bytes are separated by a dot from each other, e.g. 64.202.167.32. The notation is used to improve human readability. The newer IP address standard, often called IP Version 6 (IPv6) or Next Generation Internet Protocol (IPng), is a 128-bit binary number. The standard human readable notation for IPv6 addresses presents the address as eight 16-bit hexadecimal words, each separated by a colon, for example 2EDC:BA98:0332:0000:CF8A:000C:2154:7313.
But IP addresses, even in a human readable notation, are difficult to remember and use by people. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are strings of text that are easier to remember than IP addresses and may be used to point to any website, directory or file on the Internet. A browser is able to access a website on the Internet through the use of a URL. The URL may include a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request combined with the website's Internet address, also known as the website's domain name. An example of a URL with an HTTP request and domain name is: http://godaddy.com. In this example, the “http” identifies the URL as an HTTP request and the “godaddy.com” is the domain name.
Individuals, companies, and other entities that provide content on the web generally want to use their name or one of their trademarks as part of their domain name. Thus, domain names are generally company trademarks, personal names or short phrases concatenated with a top level domain name (TLD) extension (e.g. com, .net, org, .biz, .us, .cc, .ws, .de, etc.). TLD extensions can be divided into two groups. The first group is known as generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) and the second group is country code TLDs (ccTLD).
Domain names are much easier to remember and use than their corresponding IP addresses. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves some gTLDs and delegates the responsibility to a particular organization (hereinafter registry) for maintaining an authoritative source for the registered domain names within a TLD and their corresponding IP addresses. For certain TLDs, e.g., .biz, .info, .name, and .org, the registry is also the authoritative source for contact information related to the domain name and is referred to as a “thick” registry. For other TLDs, e.g., .com, .net, only the domain name and name server information is stored within the registry, and a registrar is the authoritative source for the contact information related to the domain name. Such registries are referred to as “thin” registries. Most gTLDs are organized through a central domain name Shared Registration System (SRS) based on their TLD.
The process for registering a domain name with .com, .net, .org and some other registries allows a customer to use an ICANN-accredited registrar. For example, if a customer, John Doe, wishes to register the domain name “JohnDoe.com”, John Doe may initially determine whether the desired domain name is available by contacting a registrar. The customer may make this contact using the registrar's webpage and typing the desired domain name into a field on the registrar's webpage created for this purpose. Upon receiving the request from the customer, the registrar may ascertain whether “JohnDoe.com” has already been registered by checking the SRS database of the registry associated with the TLD of the domain name. The results of the search may then be displayed on the webpage to thereby notify the customer of the availability of the domain name. If the domain name is available, the customer may proceed with the registration process. Otherwise, the customer may keep selecting alternative domain names until an available domain name is found.